7 Executive Summary Disclosure, proponents claim, produces a better functioning democracy: By requiring groups that advocate for or against issues on the ballot to reveal their funding sources and how they spend their money, voters gain valuable insights into the issues themselves and make more informed voting decisions. Even better, they say, it is a policy that comes with few costs; it is merely disclosure. But what if these claims are wrong? In fact, as this report shows, the research on the effects of mandatory disclosure for ballot issue campaigns finds exactly that. Disclosure does little to help voters and imposes substantial costs on those wishing to participate in democratic debate. To assess the informational benefits of disclosure, this report uses an experiment to test whether disclosure improves voters knowledge of where interest groups stand on a ballot issue. Results reveal it does not: Voters have little interest in disclosure data. Among 15 information sources a subset of participants could choose to view 12 newspaper articles, a voter guide and two campaign ads those referencing disclosure data were by far the least viewed. Viewing disclosure information had virtually no impact on participants knowledge, but viewing the voter guide did. These results show that voters would be just as capable of voting in ballot issue elections if no disclosure of contributions and expenditures were required. In a society where information about politics is everywhere, any additional benefit from disclosure laws is close to zero. Moreover, earlier research has established that disclosure burdens would-be speakers with cumbersome and complicated red tape and puts them at risk for legal sanctions (or worse) for mistakes. Research also shows that loss of privacy and fear of retribution for backing a controversial position deter contributions to ballot issue campaigns. Surprising as it may seem, the current regime of government-forced disclosure does virtually nothing to improve public discourse on ballot issues. Indeed, disclosure stifles debate by making it harder for people to organize and participate in the process. If, as even disclosure proponents agree, the goal is a freer, more robust democratic process, lifting burdensome disclosure laws is the place to start. 1

8

9 Introduction Imagine that you had to send a government official a note each time you did something political, whether it be attending a rally, volunteering on a campaign, posting to a blog or even conversing with friends over drinks. Now imagine that this information would be made public by the government. Would your conversations with friends change? Would your other political activities change? For many of us, the answer would be yes. Of course, in most cases you can volunteer on a political campaign without registering with the government. You can talk with friends without registering with the government. But when you decide to spend money on politics, whether by contributing to a candidate or a group or even collaborating with like-minded individuals on political activities, everything changes. You often are required to file complicated forms with the government. Your personal information, including your home address and employer, is likely to be posted on the Internet in handy searchable databases. The release of this information has led to lost jobs, vandalism and even violence. 1 You might think there would be a good reason for collecting this information, but in the case of ballot issues, the justification is surprisingly thin. In the case of contributions to the campaigns of candidates for office, the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that the fear of actual or perceived corruption justifies the disclosure of contributions to candidate campaigns. 2 In the case of ballot issue campaigns, however, the candidate is a policy position, and no such anti-corruption rationale exists. Those who want to justify disclosure for ballot issue campaigns instead rely on other rationales, claiming that voters can make better decisions if they know who supports these campaigns. Disclosure is thought to be the most straightforward way to learn this information. If you know that Pepsi contributed funds to fight the Ban Soft Drinks ballot issue, the argument goes, you are now better-positioned to determine where you stand on the measure. Another, related rationale is that the government must protect voters from misleading information in campaigns. For instance, disclosure proponents would argue that Pepsi should not be able to anonymously create a shadowy group with a name like Support Children s Health that advocates against the Ban Soft Drinks initiative. Disclosure laws allegedly prevent voters from being duped by an ad about the health benefits of soft drinks paid for by Support Children s Health. The fundamental premise of disclosure laws is that information about who contributes and spends money for political purposes can only benefit society, improving voter knowledge and holding individuals and groups accountable for their speech. With rare exception, the benefits of disclosure laws are viewed as so self-evident that data pointing to those benefits seems unnecessary. But, as is so often the case when someone claims something is self-evident, there is in fact no evidence to support the benefits of disclosure. This pattern should be familiar to observers of campaign finance law: The benefits of campaign finance reform are taken to be self-evidently large, when in reality they often approximate zero. Meanwhile, the costs are assumed to be nonexistent when in reality they are substantial. This is true of public financing for campaigns, a reform which does little to improve competitiveness or faith in government and can, as in the case of the recently overturned Arizona Clean Elections law, impinge on speech in an unconstitutional manner. 3 And it is true of disclosure laws for ballot issue campaigns, the topic of this study. This report is a lesson in contrasts. While the costs of disclosure have been established, the benefits of disclosure have always been assumed to exist. But when actual research on the benefits of disclosure is considered, the picture that emerges is very different. This report is organized into two main parts. The first part discusses several studies demonstrating the costs of campaign disclosure. 3

10 DISCLOSURE FACTS RED TAPE BURDENS AND DETERS SPEECH An experiment where 255 people were asked to complete disclosure forms for a grassroots ballot issue campaign found: It then shows that in a society where information about politics is everywhere, the informational benefits of disclosure laws are close to zero. The bottom line: The results do not favor the continuation of disclosure laws for ballot issues. 93 % 0 41 % 89 % Did not know citizen groups had to file government paperwork to speak about a ballot issue People correctly completed the forms Tasks on forms were correctly completed Said red tape and threat of legal penalties for mistakes would deter political activity Source: Milyo, J. (2007). Red tape: Strangling free speech and political debate. Arlington, VA: Institute for Justice. The Burdens of Disclosure Red Tape Campaign finance disclosure laws place burdens on individuals who work together to speak out on a ballot issue. If they spend all but a minimal amount or receive virtually any contributions (monetary or in-kind) in support of their efforts, they enter a byzantine world of complicated paperwork and onerous regulations. Unless they are experts in campaign finance law, or can afford to hire one, these would-be speakers run the risk of making errors that could cost them thousands of dollars and lead to damaging lawsuits. University of Missouri economist Dr. Jeffrey Milyo demonstrated just how confusing these regulations can be. Milyo asked 255 ordinary citizens to complete the paperwork required to speak as a group on ballot issues in one of three states Colorado, California or Missouri. 4 Participants included non-student adults aged 25 to 64 in Columbia, Mo., as well as graduate and undergraduate students at least 20 years of age at the University of Missouri. Milyo surveyed participants in advance of the experiment to gauge their knowledge of disclosure requirements. Only seven percent of the respondents were aware that groups of citizens had to file forms with the government to speak as a group on a ballot issue. In other words, citizens wishing to participate in the political process may unwittingly break the law and expose themselves to government fines, government lawsuits and even lawsuits from political opponents. This threat is not hypothetical. Six residents of Parker North, Colo., banded together in 2006 to oppose the annexation of their neighborhood 4

11 into a nearby town. They, like the 93 percent of those surveyed in Milyo s study, were unaware that their loose collaboration required them to register as an issue committee. Supporters of the annexation, seeing an opening thanks to Colorado s campaign finance disclosure laws, sued these residents for failing to register and keep track of their spending on materials like poster board and markers. 5 Milyo s experiment shows that compliance with disclosure laws is challenging even for citizens who are aware of them. Milyo presented the 255 participants with a scenario for a group called Neighbors United. This fictional group received a few contributions some large, some small, some anonymous, some named, some monetary and some non-monetary and made only one expenditure. This pattern realistically replicates that of a small group of like-minded citizens as opposed to a large interest group. The experiment was not designed to set the participants up for failure. It asked them to do no more than would be expected of a typical citizen participating in a ballot issue campaign. Yet fail they did. Overall, the mostly collegeeducated respondents completed just 41 percent of tasks correctly. Respondents had trouble reporting non-monetary contributions, such as a discount given by a T-shirt maker, as well as handling anonymous donations and aggregating contributions by donor. Only one participant asked to complete the Missouri forms realized that a campaign event resulting in $15 of contributions requires the filing of a statement providing details about the event. In a subsequent debriefing, nearly all participants expressed frustration with the forms Worse than the IRS! wrote one respondent and a sizable majority believed that knowledge of the red tape associated with disclosure would deter citizens from participating in the political process. These results are consistent with a basic tenet of economics: When something is taxed, you get less of it. Disclosure laws that burden citizens with confusing reporting requirements and the DISCLOSURE STORIES RED TAPE TIES UP FLORIDA CITIZEN GROUP By Paul Sherman, Institute for Justice staff attorney Should grassroots groups of citizens have to comply with campaign finance laws that the U.S. Supreme Court has held are unconstitutionally burdensome for corporations like General Motors and unions like the AFL-CIO? For too many groups, that is the reality of political participation, as Nathan Worley, Pat Wayman, John Scolaro and Robin Stublen learned when they joined together to oppose an amendment to the Florida Constitution in The target of their concern was Amendment 4, which was popularly known as the Hometown Democracy Amendment. Amendment 4 would have required that municipalities that adopt or amend their local comprehensive land-use plan submit the changes to a referendum of the voters. Nathan, Pat, John and Robin thought Amendment 4 was an affront to property rights that would stifle economic growth in Florida and they wanted other voters to hear that view. So the group decided to pool their resources and run ads on their local talk radio station, urging the public to vote against the amendment. But, thanks to Florida s campaign finance laws, such spontaneous political expression is all but impossible. For Nathan and the others, going forward with their plans would have triggered a mountain of red tape, because under Florida law, anytime two or more people get together to advocate the passage or defeat of a ballot issue and raise or spend more than $500 for the effort, they become a fully regulated political committee. 1 What does this entail? First, Nathan and the others would have to register with the state and establish a separate bank account. 2 Then the group could run its ads, but it would have to keep meticulous financial records and report all activity. 3 And unlike most states, Florida does not place any lower limit on contributions and expenditures that have to be reported even a one-cent contribution must be separately itemized, including the contributor s name and address, and reported to the state. Wading into such a complicated area can be dangerous and the penalties can be severe. If Nathan and the others speak without complying with the law, they can face civil or criminal fines of up to $1,000 per violation and even up to one year in jail. 4 As Pat Wayman said, These laws make politics inaccessible to common citizens; you need to hire an attorney to make sure you don t get in trouble with the government. We shouldn t have to file any paperwork, or hire accountants or campaign finance lawyers, just to exercise our First Amendment rights. Rather than remain silent, Pat and the others have chosen to fight back. In October 2010 they filed a federal lawsuit to strike down Florida s burdensome campaign finance laws, relying on a 2010 Supreme Court decision that held that similar laws were unconstitutionally burdensome for corporations and unions. 5 1 Fla. Stat (1). 2 Fla. Stat (1)(a),.021(1). 3 Fla. Stat (1),.06(3), 07(4)(a). 4 Fla. Stat , Citizens United v. FEC, 130 S. Ct. 876, (2010). 5

12 DISCLOSURE STORIES REPORTING ERRORS BRING CRUSHING FINES By Paul Sherman, Institute for Justice staff attorney In 2002, Carolyn Knee volunteered her time and energy to campaigning for a local ballot issue that would allow San Francisco to break its ties with power company Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Knee had been a legal assistant for 25 years, but had no experience with campaigning or with campaign finance laws, so she hired an accountant to help her with the bookkeeping. Five years later with the election over and the ballot issue she championed defeated the records from Knee s now-defunct ballot issue committee were subject to a random audit. Despite having hired an accountant and making her best effort to comply with the law, the audit discovered several reporting errors. As a result, Knee, a retiree living on a fixed income, found herself threatened with over $26,000 in fines. Knee is not the first to be hit with exorbitant fines by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), the agency charged with enforcing California s campaign finance laws. Nor is she likely to be the last. California s campaign finance laws are so complex that errors and fines are practically inevitable. The FPPC itself reached this conclusion in a 2000 study titled Overly Complex and Unduly Burdensome: The Critical Need to Simplify the Political Reform Act of 1974 in California. 1 As part of that report the FPPC conducted an experiment that asked individuals with different levels of campaign experience to fill out campaign finance disclosure forms. As in Milyo s experiment (see page 4), participants performed miserably. The FPPC found that [e]ven participants with backgrounds in campaigns could not fill out the forms without making multiple mistakes. 2 Thankfully, Knee was ultimately able to settle the charges against her by paying a $267 fine. Not everyone gets off so easy. In 1995, Californians Against Corruption was slapped with an $808,000 fine for reporting errors at that point the largest fine in the agency s history despite having spent only $103,091 in support of a recall campaign. 3 Although Knee escaped financial ruin, her experience was enough to convince her not to get involved in political campaigns in the future. As she said, I would never do this again. It totally discourages grassroots campaigns. 4 1 Lucas, S. S. (2000). Overly complex and unduly burdensome, Retrieved December 23, 2006 from 2 Lucas, 2000, p Doherty, B. (1996). Disclosure flaw, Retrieved August 2, 2011 from 4 Witherell, A. (2007). The ethics of ethics, Retrieved August 2, 2011 from specter of fines and lawsuits are a de facto tax on speech. Cumbersome reporting requirements represent a very real threat to political participation. Fear Factor Disclosure laws place a second set of burdens on citizens. Individuals who contribute to ballot issue campaigns will have their name, address and often their employer reported publicly for donations above a certain (typically very low) threshold. 6 For somebody who is publicly active in politics, this requirement may be a minor nuisance. But for somebody who wants to support a cause privately, government-forced disclosure may present a significant barrier. Such privacy concerns are heightened by easy access to information on the Internet. Beyond the information directly available from the government, several websites aggregate donors identities and contributions in ways that harness the latest technology. The Huffington Post s Fundrace site uses Google Maps so viewers can see who in their neighborhood has made political contributions. 7 There is now even a program that scans inboxes and then allows you to see the political contributions of the people and organizations that are mentioned in the s you receive. 8 Concern about privacy comes not just from political views being revealed, but also from personal contact information being posted online. Gigi Brienza learned that lesson the hard way when a simple campaign donation landed her on the target list of a domestic terrorist group (see sidebar p. 7). Disclosure laws, in other words, make it much more difficult for people to support policy positions anonymously. Even if they do not fear retaliation, they may simply desire the same privacy for contributions that their vote receives at the ballot box. This fear factor acts as another tax on participation and may lead citizens to forgo giving to ballot issue campaigns. When Dr. Dick Carpenter of the University of Colorado and the 6

13 Institute for Justice asked survey respondents whether disclosure of their name and address would lead them to think twice about contributing, about 60 percent said that it would. 9 When asked why, respondents cited retaliation fears more than any other reason except a general desire for privacy. 10 Support for disclosure laws generally varies depending on whether the question is framed as the disclosure of other people s information or one s own, what Carpenter dubs the disclosure for thee, but not for me phenomenon. 11 Eighty percent of voters favored the disclosure of contributors identities, 12 but only 40 percent favored disclosure of their contributions if their name and address is revealed, and even fewer just 24 percent favored disclosure if their employer is revealed. 13 Respondents expressed concern that their job could be in jeopardy or that they could face retaliation from a union for voting on another side of the issue. 14 In the abstract, then, citizens may favor disclosure, but when the consequences of disclosure are personalized, their opinions change dramatically. If we are concerned about disclosure s impact on political participation, what matters is not whether people like the idea of disclosure in the abstract, but whether it causes them to participate less. Carpenter s survey and the experiences of people like Gigi Brienza suggest that it does. Purported Benefits of Disclosure Turning to potential benefits, campaign finance disclosure laws for ballot issues, unlike for candidate campaigns, cannot be justified on corruption or appearance of corruption grounds, since by definition ballot issue campaigns are about issues, not candidates. The justification for these laws, if provided, relies almost exclusively on the purported informational benefits of disclosure. This section reviews these claims and shows why there is good reason to doubt them. The next section presents new results from an experiment DISCLOSURE STORIES SINGLE CONTRIBUTION EXPOSES DONOR TO THREATS By Paul Sherman, Institute for Justice staff attorney It is well known that campaign finance disclosure can lead to retaliation for making contributions to unpopular candidates or causes. What is less widely recognized is that campaign finance disclosure can lead to other types of harassment that are unrelated to a donor s political views and even more dangerous. Consider Gigi Brienza. In 2004 she attended a speech given by then-presidential candidate John Edwards. She was inspired by his message and decided to make a $500 political contribution to his campaign. Two years later, she found herself the target of an animal-rights terrorist group. And, according to the FBI, campaign finance disclosure made it possible. Brienza was targeted by a group called Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty (SHAC). SHAC s mission is to put an animal-testing laboratory called Huntington Life Sciences out of business by any means necessary legal or illegal. SHAC does not just target Huntington, it also targets employees at companies that do business with Huntington, companies like pharmaceutical manufacturer Bristol- Myers Squibb, where Brienza worked at the time. Because Brienza s contribution to Edwards campaign was greater than $200, federal law required that her name, address, occupation and employer be disclosed on the website of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), where that information was accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. This was enough to put Brienza and about 100 of her colleagues in SHAC s crosshairs. Using the FEC s database, SHAC was able to search campaign finance records for the home addresses of people who worked for companies affiliated with Huntington. SHAC used this disclosure data to generate a list of targets, which it posted under the ominous heading Now you know where to find them. Luckily, Brienza was never attacked, and many of SHAC s leaders were subsequently arrested. But her experience demonstrates that, particularly in the Internet era, there are social costs to disclosure that go far beyond partisan political retaliation. The abuse of disclosure data by groups like SHAC is a threat that cannot be predicted or protected against, except by citizens restricting themselves to making contributions smaller than the legal threshold for disclosure. Sadly, this is what Brienza now feels compelled to do. After recounting her story in The Washington Post she concluded, If I am moved to write a check [in the future], I will limit my contribution to $199.99: the price of privacy in an age of voyeurism and the cost of security in an age of domestic terrorism. 1 1 Brienza, G. (2007). I got inspired. I gave. Then I got scared, Retrieved August 2, 2011 from 7

14 DISCLOSURE FACTS FOR THEIR OWN CONTRIBUTIONS, PEOPLE PREFER PRIVACY A survey of more than 2,000 citizens in six states with ballot issue disclosure laws found: 80 % 40 % 24 % 60 % Favor disclosure of contributors to ballot issue campaigns Favor disclosure of their own name and address if they contribute to a ballot issue campaign Favor disclosure of their employer if they contribute to a ballot issue campaign Would think twice about contributing to an issue campaign if their name and address is revealed Source: Carpenter, D. M., II. (2007). Disclosure costs: Unintended consequences of campaign finance reform. Arlington, VA: Institute for Justice. that further challenges the conventional wisdom on disclosure. Do Voters Want Disclosure Information? Voters can obtain disclosure-related information in one of two ways. They can access a government or private database, typically now webbased, and review contributions and expenditures. Or they can obtain disclosure information indirectly from the media, campaigns and other opinion leaders or elites. A newspaper, for instance, may report on which interest groups have spent funds in support of or opposition to a ballot issue. There is good reason to question whether voters would ever access this information directly from state disclosure websites. Voters have an incentive to be rationally ignorant, gathering very little information in making voting decisions. Anthony Downs, 15 who first developed this idea, noted that political information gathering is time-consuming, so people will do it only if the benefits outweigh the costs. As Downs found, for most voters gathering information is typically not worth the cost in time spent. 16 The idea of rational ignorance is not a comment on the intelligence or open-mindedness of voters. It simply acknowledges that people have many demands on their time, and for many, spending time researching political issues may not top the list. So they make a voting decision based on what they already know. Thus, the notion that a voter will sit down at a computer and search databases for information on interest groups strains credulity. It is no surprise, then, that the Carpenter survey found that less than half of respondents claimed to have awareness of disclosure laws and only a third claimed to know where to access disclosure information. 17 Since direct acquisition of disclosure information is unlikely, the second means of information acquisition information entrepreneurs is the typical focus for reformers. 18 Information entrepreneurs include the news 8

15 media, think tanks and other groups that disseminate information. Certainly the news media reports on campaign finance disclosure, and of course candidates and interest groups reference campaign finance information in advertising. But how prevalent, really, is this kind of activity for ballot issues? The answer, according to a review of campaign information in Colorado s 2006 ballot issue election, is not much. Only 4.8 percent of newspaper articles, editorials and letters to the editor; think tank and nonprofit material; state-produced documentation; and campaign-generated documentation referenced disclosure information. That figured dropped to 3.4 percent in the two weeks leading up to the election. 19 This finding is not an anomaly. Professor Raymond La Raja examined articles for state-level campaign finance from 194 newspapers covering all 50 states from 2002 to He found that each newspaper averaged only about three stories per year regarding campaign finance. 20 And less than 20 percent of those stories fell into the category of analysis the category that would provide information about contributors to campaigns. 21 These studies establish that information about who contributes to ballot issues and other statewide races is not, in fact, used extensively by information entrepreneurs in communicating with voters. The experiment reported below complements this research by directly assessing voters interest in and use of disclosure-related information in the form it is most likely to be acquired from elites. The results of the experiment buttress the above findings by showing that voters do not demand disclosure information. Does Disclosure Help Voters Vote? In a second claim, disclosure advocates assert that improving voter competence is the most persuasive rationale for disclosure laws regarding ballot issues. 22 One legal scholar writes that the real role of disclosure is voter information, not corruption-deterrence, arguing, [i]nformation about the contributions to and DISCLOSURE STORIES DISCLOSURE ABETS POLITICAL INTIMIDATION By Paul Sherman, Institute for Justice staff attorney Like many people, professor of law and former congressional candidate James L. Huffman had always assumed that public disclosure of political contributions was a good thing. But Huffman s opinion changed when he ran for office as the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Oregon in As Huffman put it, The reality is that public disclosure serves the interests of incumbents running for re-election by discouraging support for challengers. 1 How does it work? By giving incumbents the power to intimidate even smalldollar donors: A challenger seeks a contribution from a person known to support candidates of the challenger s party. The potential supporter responds: I m glad you re running. I agree with you on almost everything. But I can t support you because I cannot risk getting my business crosswise with the incumbent who is likely to be reelected. 2 Huffman is not the first political challenger to experience firsthand how disclosure can chill political participation to the benefit of incumbent candidates. In 2008, West Virginia Attorney General candidate Dan Greear voiced similar concerns during his campaign to unseat incumbent Attorney General Darrell McGraw, noting, I go to so many people and hear the same thing: I sure hope you can beat him, but I can t afford to have my name on your records. He might come after me next. 3 Incumbent candidates are not the only ones who use disclosure information to retaliate against their political opponents. The 2008 federal elections saw the creation of Accountable America, a group that pledged to confront donors to conservative groups, hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions. 4 Unfortunately, legal standards adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court do little to protect against political retaliation. The Court has held that individuals and groups may be exempt from disclosure only if they first demonstrate a reasonable probability that disclosure will subject them to threats, harassment, or reprisals from either Government officials or private parties. 5 But as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has observed, this supposed protection is a hollow assurance. 6 In practice, it is almost impossible to meet the reasonable probability standard unless a group or individual has already suffered retaliation. The result, as Justice Thomas notes, is a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in core political speech, the primary object of First Amendment protection. 7 1 Huffman, J. L. (2011). How donor disclosure hurts democracy, Retrieved August 2, 2011 from 2 Huffman, Strassel, K. A. (2008). Challenging Spitzerism at the polls, Retrieved August 2, 2011 from online.wsj.com/article/sb html. 4 Luo, M. (2008). Group plans campaign against G.O.P. donors, Retrieved August 2, 2011 from 5 Citizens United v. FEC, 130 S. Ct. 876, 914 (2010). 6 Citizens United, 130 S. Ct. at 982 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). 7 Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). 9

16 10 DISCLOSURE FACTS MEDIA MAKE LITTLE USE OF DISCLOSURE INFORMATION 4.8 % 3 wide Newspaper articles, nonprofit material and government and campaign publications on issues in 2006 Colorado election that referenced disclosure information Average number of stories on state-level campaign finance per year per newspaper in study of 194 newspapers nationfrom 2002 to 2004 Sources: Carpenter, D. M., II. (2009). Mandatory disclosure for ballot-initiative campaigns. Independent Review, 13(4), ; La Raja, R. J. (2007). Sunshine laws and the press: The effect of campaign disclosure on news reporting in the American states. Election Law Journal, 6(3), expenditures by groups supporting or opposing a measure can be quite helpful in understanding the likely consequences of what may be a difficult-to-parse measure. 23 More simply, the argument is that ballot issues can be confusing and voters may have limited knowledge about the issues being considered. So knowing the identities of supporters, thanks to disclosure, can provide voters cues or shortcuts as to how to vote, especially if the right information is disclosed. 24 For example, if voters know that the Sierra Club or the NRA backs a measure, this provides information about its impact, even if voters do not know much else. For cues like these to be useful, proponents argue, three things must be true. First, voters must correctly associate the group with a viewpoint the Sierra Club with a pro-environment view and the NRA with a pro- Second Amendment view. Second, the group must be viewed as credible. Finally, voters must know the groups backing or opposing a measure in time to affect their decisions. 25 So far, this is a plausible story. However, in the leap from cues to government-forced disclosure, the story runs into trouble. For disclosure advocates, the state is justified in casting a wide disclosure net because we cannot know in advance which groups that contribute to campaigns will provide useful cues. 26 All must be disclosed, because some of the information could be useful to voters. There are several problems with this claim. First, notice that cues will be most helpful from organized interest groups with well-known or easily discovered viewpoints. Such groups typically work to promote their views in the media and directly to voters, so they provide cues for voters without disclosure. Second, and related, there is a wealth of information available to voters other than campaign finance records. It is not clear that mandatory disclosure adds to that. Third, a lot of disclosure information will provide no useful cues at all, most especially the identities of individual donors unknown to most people.

17 So the real question is not whether cues are helpful some may be but whether mandatory disclosure adds useful information beyond what would be available in a world without these laws. In the language of economics, what are the marginal benefits of disclosure? That is the question my experiment is designed to answer. But earlier research and three examples give reason to doubt disclosure s marginal benefits. Insurance Reform in California: Cues Do Not Require Disclosure Political scientist Arthur Lupia has conducted the seminal statistical work in the area of voter cues on ballot issues. 27 Lupia surveyed voters on five ballot measures dealing with insurance reform in California. He found that knowing the positions of the insurance industry or trial lawyers on the measures enabled voters to vote as if they knew more about the measures than they actually did. 28 This suggests that cues are sometimes useful, but it does not speak to the marginal benefits of disclosure. Although Lupia s research is often used to justify campaign finance disclosure laws, the positions of trial lawyers and the insurance industry on these propositions would presumably be easy for media and other elites to discern without disclosure of campaign contributions or spending. And it is from these sources that less informed voters are likely to be getting their information. In fact, the California Ballot Pamphlet for 1988, which contained pro and con statements for the five ballot issues discussed in Lupia s study and a description of the law s impact, provided a wealth of information for voters, whether they read it themselves or received the information indirectly from opinion leaders. Since California, like all ballot issue states, provides disclosure data, many of the pro and con arguments in the pamphlet referenced this data. Importantly, however, the disclosure information provided little additional information for voters beyond the other information in the pamphlet. For example, in the Argument for Proposition 100, advocates claim that competing propositions on the ballot were written by insurance companies. In a rebuttal, opponents noted that Proposition 100 was written by trial lawyers. Opponents also mentioned that trial lawyers were funding Proposition 100 efforts, but this information is superfluous once we know that opponents of Proposition 100 align it with trial lawyers. Overall, then, the marginal benefits of disclosure information are probably close to zero in Lupia s study. Land Development in Florida: Flood of (Non-disclosure) Information Turning to a more recent example, consider Amendment 4 from Florida s 2010 ballot. This ballot issue dealt with land development issues. Disclosure advocates argue that disclosure is necessary because, otherwise, voters would be ignorant about where interest groups stand on the issue and would be unable to use this information to make informed voting choices. But consider the results of a search for { Amendment 4 Florida} using Google s search engine. Clicking links based on this search, I learned that a group created by the Chamber of Commerce, Vote No on 4, built a coalition of 320 members, 4,000 volunteers and 15,000 Facebook fans in opposition to the ballot issue. 29 I also learned that the Florida Chapter of the American Planning Association opposed the ballot measure. 30 A follow-up search of { vote no on 4 and coalition members} led me to discover that Realtors opposed the ballot measure. Realtors were not shy about their opposition, engaging in several grassroots efforts, such as passing out stickers and posting yard signs. 31 From looking at the website of one interest group involved in the Amendment 4 debate, Florida Hometown Democracy, I learned that the Audubon Society of the Everglades endorsed the amendment, as did Clean Water Action, Friends of the Everglades, the Sierra Club of Florida, FL Public Interest Research Group (Florida PIRG) and the Save the Manatee Club. 32 To be listed as an endorser on this website, a group or individual 11

18 DISCLOSURE STORIES INSTEAD OF RESPONDING TO OPPONENTS, FILE A CAMPAIGN FINANCE COMPLAINT By Steve Simpson, Institute for Justice senior attorney Whether disclosure laws provide any useful information to voters is questionable. But the laws are clearly effective at one thing: arming political rivals with a weapon they can use against their opponents. Most states allow citizens to file complaints against those they think have violated campaign finance laws. In some states, private citizens can actually prosecute alleged violators in court. This may sound like an effective enforcement mechanism, but as Colorado political strategist Floyd Cirulli once testified, [A]nyone can use [campaign finance complaints] strategically to create an issue in a political campaign. 1 Indeed, David Flagg, the investigations manager for the Florida Elections Commission, estimates that 98 percent of the complaints the Commission receives are politically motivated. 2 According to Flagg, campaign finance complaints are often filed by individuals seeking to punish their political opponent or to harass that person or otherwise divert their attention from their campaign. 3 That happened in Colorado in 2006 when a group of neighbors opposed the annexation of their neighborhood into the town of Parker (see page 4). After becoming annoyed at the group s comments in the local paper, proponents of the annexation filed a complaint against the group alleging violations of disclosure laws. 4 As one of the proponents later explained, We did that action because those [annexation opponents] refused to debate us. 5 California has one of the most onerous private complaint provisions in the country. The law not only allows private parties to file and prosecute complaints against others, it provides a financial incentive to do so by allowing complainants to keep a portion of the fines assessed for violations. According to election law expert Robert Stern, who worked for the California Secretary of State and the Fair Political Practices Commission, private complaints were often baseless or brought to give one competitor in an election an advantage. 6 As a result, in June 2000, a bipartisan commission appointed by the governor of California recommended reforming the state s private enforcement provision because it could be used for political gain or to silence speech. 7 Disclosure laws are complicated, making mistakes more likely, especially for people who lack the experience of political professionals. With private complaint provisions on the books, the costs of making a mistake often become prohibitive. The result, ironically, is that disclosure laws whose avowed purpose is to inform voters may actually end up silencing speech. 1 Deposition of Floyd Ciruli in Sampson v. Coffman, Case No , Dist. of Colo. (Oct. 4, 2007), at 37:19 39:1. 2 Deposition of David Flagg in Worley v. Browning, Case No , No. Dist. of Fla. (April 18, 2011), at 19: Flagg Dep. at 16:16 18:2. 4 Deposition of Patsy Putnam in Sampson v. Coffman, Case No , Dist. of Colo. (April 19, 2007), at 45:10 20; 79:15 80:6. 5 Solomon, B. P. (2010). Colorado campaign finance law ruled unconstitutional by Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, Retrieved August 2, 2011 from us-10th-circuit-court-of-_n_ html. 6 Deposition of Robert Stern in Sampson v. Coffman, Case No , Dist. of Colo. (Sept. 26, 2007), at 36:4 37:11. 7 Lucas, S. S. (2000). Overly complex and unduly burdensome, Retrieved December 23, 2006 from simply filled out a form giving consent. A financial contribution was not required. 33 All of this information came from press releases or statements on the websites of groups involved in the initiative and was not related to government-forced disclosure. Yet, from these simple searches that took minutes to perform, I learned that environmentalists and interests opposed to development were on one side of the issue, and development supporters were on the other. This flood of information available to voters and elites about the supporters and opponents of Amendment 4 without recourse to disclosure raises a fundamental question: To the extent that voters use the support and opposition of interest groups as cues to determine how to vote on a ballot issue, what additional benefit does knowing who contributed financial resources to the debate provide, above and beyond what is already available without disclosure? The answer is not much. Ballot Issues in Colorado: Information Entrepreneurs May Not Translate Disclosure Information Into Useful or Any Cues As part of a study of ballot issues in Colorado, discussed earlier in this report, Carpenter used two databases, LexisNexis and ProQuest, to gather all news media sources mentioning issues on the 2006 Colorado general election ballot. He also searched for mentions of ballot issues from think tanks and nonprofit organizations and did a general Internet search to discover other sources of information, including the state s voter guide. All told, from January 1 through November 7, 2006, voters had access to more than 1,000 pieces of information that dealt with ballot issues. Recall that only a tiny fraction of this information less than 5 percent is disclosure-related. It is difficult to understand how this result can be squared with claims that disclosure is vital for voters in the ballot issue process. Is that tiny fraction of information so important that without it, the other 95 percent of information 12

19 is not helpful? Do the 320 editorial references to ballot issues not help voters enough? Do the 577 news article mentions leave out key pieces of information? Do the state s voter guide, think tank publications and campaign-generated material fail to inform? Moreover, research shows that even when media outlets make use of disclosure, they do not do so in ways that are likely to provide voters with useful information. La Raja s study of candidate campaigns showed that, while better disclosure laws produce fewer stories focused on the horse race for money, better disclosure laws have little effect on the prevalence of analysis stories, including those that provide information about campaign contributions. 34 Some research even shows that people who are better educated and therefore are more likely to read newspapers do worse than less-well-educated respondents in estimating various aspects of campaign finance, including the amount of money raised in campaigns. 35 If the news media rarely reports disclosure information, if better disclosure laws do not make for better reporting, and if those who read newspapers more actually know less about campaign finance, it is hard to see how disclosure is making voters more informed. On top of that, cues may not be all that valuable for the average voter. Research on information processing in campaigns has found that heuristics (or short-cuts to decision making) help experts make better decisions, but do little for political novices. 36 Others express skepticism about cues, noting that people often lack sufficient baseline knowledge to use them effectively. 37 Even supporters of disclosure stop short of a full-throated defense of the cue-based argument. One writes, [M]ore study is required before we can reach conclusions about whether cues actually improve voter competence or work sometimes unexpectedly to undermine it. 38 Another expresses skepticism that more information is always better in disclosure: [M]ore encompassing and stringent disclosure laws could, paradoxically, undermine its voter-education value. Voters are unlikely to be able to process ever-increasing amounts of campaign finance information. 39 Contrast this with the wealth of truly useful non-disclosure information available from my simple Google searches on Florida s Amendment 4. They turned up not only information about who was on which side of the issue, but also why. These interest groups were eager to explain the issue to voters as they saw it. Would Voters Be Misled Without Disclosure? Disclosure advocates third claim is that disclosure keeps voters from being misled by shadowy interests. The essence of this claim is that so-called veiled political actors sometimes try to hide their financial support for or against a ballot issue. Disclosure advocates outline four concerns with such veiled interests: 1) They try to hide behind patriotic or populist sounding names so that voters will incorrectly assume that these groups support issues likely to be aligned with their interests. 2) They may be created to disguise notorious entities that fear voter backlash. 3) Organizations with broad name recognition and established credentials may be used as vehicles for other interests not normally associated with the organizations. 4) Veiled groups may want to hide funding that is coming primarily from out-of-state sources, since knowledge of significant out-of-state-funding could serve as a cue that the issue is not necessarily in the best interests of the state or its citizens. 40 What links together these four points is the notion that voters are being deceived in ways that affect the voting decision when they receive 13

20 information from groups hiding their financial support. The lack of information, or erroneous information, about who is backing a particular message may improperly alter how campaign information is processed. But, again, it is important to consider the role of such groups in a world without disclosure. First, it need not be the case that decisions always improve due to the disclosure of funding sources behind ballot issues. A focus on the messenger may distract from the message. 41 Just because an interest is from out-of-state, for instance, does not necessarily imply that the position it espouses will not benefit voters. After all, a ballot issue may have been proposed by a well-organized interest that seeks significant benefits at a very high cost to unorganized taxpayers. If an opposing interest is out-of-state or notorious but has worthwhile information to share, it might have greater impact without the baggage associated with the interest group name or location. In other words, when voters have biases for or against a particular group, anonymously provided information may be the better bet for effective information transmission about a ballot issue. A rule against anonymity disadvantages such groups, and the perspective they wish to share, in public debate. Second, the media and opposing interests have an incentive to call into question statements by veiled political actors, so such groups hardly get a free pass. In a world without government-forced disclosure, those groups that choose not to share the identities of financial supporters run the risk that opponents and voters will question their motives. The give-and-take of the political process and the watchdog role of the press exist even in a world with anonymous speech. Thus cues similar to those supposedly provided by disclosure would still be available. For instance, suppose that a group called Californians for the Environment (CFE), secretly funded by a business that pollutes significantly, advocates against a ballot issue that would limit pollution. The Sierra Club or similar group would be very likely to call the CFE s motivations into question. The actions of the Sierra Club would provide a cue to voters here, and it is difficult to see what marginal benefits would exist for most voters from knowing that the CFE is funded by the polluting business, given the statement by the Sierra Club. Moreover, donors may reveal their identities under pressure from others. For instance, nearly immediately after the onset of media scrutiny, Ed Conard identified himself as the funder of a corporation named W. Spann LLC that in turn contributed $1 million dollars to a super PAC supportive of presidential candidate Mitt Romney. 42 A world without government-forced disclosure does not mean a world without information or even a world without voluntary disclosure on the part of many groups. Thus, we come back to the central question: Does mandatory disclosure yield any marginal benefits, given all the other information available about ballot issues? That is the focus of my experiment. Assessing Disclosure s Marginal Benefits To examine the marginal benefits of disclosure, and related, are voters interested in disclosure I designed an experiment where participants information? Third, does viewing disclosure had the chance to vote on a ballot issue, but information improve the ability of voters to identify the positions of interest groups on a ballot different groups were given access to different information about the issue. This design allowed issue, once the other information they access is me to assess three aspects of voter behavior in taken into account? ballot issue campaigns. First, are voters interested in information about ballot issues? Second, advocates is that disclosure information Recall that a central claim of disclosure provides 14

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